Why Woven Nest?

‘What is your why?’ - the question new companies within the charities and community interest sector are asked time and time again. ‘Why do you exist?’ For us it’s an easy one, Woven Nest started with a question too. ‘What about the people upstairs?’ We were asked by the care staff we worked with. Care homes tend to have several floors and residents often live on separate floors depending on their needs. For example, care homes might have a residential floor downstairs, a dementia floor and then a third floor for nursing care.

We were being asked this question at the time when we were working as individual arts practitioners in care homes across the North East of England. We were delivering group activities in lounges to residents who enjoyed colourful workshops involving singing, storytelling, movement, art and generally having a good natter with us and the school children that joined us for sessions. During this time we were inspired by the wit and creativity of the older people we met, especially those living with dementia. They seemed to have unlocked a special part of them that allowed them to live in the moment and contribute to the sessions in a way that no self-conscious, overthinking adult could. We absolutely love this type of activity.

But, as we became increasingly aware of ‘the people upstairs’ who were living on nursing units, it was clear that our workshops were inaccessible to at least a third of the care home population. We started to work more closely together around this time, realising that we really had no answer for that question that would come up again and again, and we wanted to find an answer for it.

That’s when we started collecting teapots.

Our first of many tea pot puppets, Morris.

Our should-have-been-but-didn’t-because-of-covid first company project was a roaming tea-trolley theatre made up of secret compartments and teapot surprises. The idea was to use the tea trolley as a way of getting to know the residents who we wanted to start making work for, for us to offer a brief multi-sensory opportunity and to see how residents responded to our tea pot puppets. We had no idea how this would be have received as it was purely experimental and we still don’t! 

In March 2020, when we were days from launching the project, care homes closed their doors and it was clear that it would be for a long time. So back to the drawing board we went, and from this Mariana’s Song was born.